MoonRightRomantic

One idea I had for making Nephilim easier to grok would be to allow characters to recall past lives during play rather than starting with convoluted character creation, although this may not be feasible under the BRP rules. Aside from being newbie unfriendly, another possible problem with the game's premise is that Nephilim are presented as parasites possessing human bodies. While sufficient for antagonists in a horror or conspiracy game, it isn't really appropriate for protagonists. One way I think that this could be addressed, in tandem with recalling past lives during play, is that the relationship between the human and nephilim personalities be rewritten to make them less seemingly villainous. Rather than parasites, it might be better to characterize them as symbiotic. To some degree this concept of merger between elemental and simulacrum is already present in the standard rules, since nephilim rely on their simulacrum's characteristics plus the bonus from their ka's meta-characteristics. I would prefer not to characterize them as awakened humans because that's already what every other modern magic game does, because that doesn't fit with the rest of the cosmology and magic system, and because that makes certain character types like selenim and ar-kaim untenable. For example, perhaps the shouit mechanic could be rewritten. Instead of the nephilim suffering sudden amnesia after a critical on a skill roll, they accrue shouit points for failing to maintain their muggle relationships to represent the muggle side's emotional turmoil. When shouit does take over, the muggle personality doesn't forget everything but merely doesn't remember the occult life and their psyche devises explanations to explain it away; although specifics may vary by character. Conversely, the khaiba mechanic could be rewritten in a similar fashion. Rather than simply accruing with critical rolls until it maxes and forces a state of khaiba, points could accumulate on a meter in opposition to shouit points. Khaiba represents the base nature of the nephilim without the human side to anchor them, so nephilim are truly gestalt beings rather than elemental spirits possessing human bodies. So what effect does this have on the culture of the nephilim? It means that they would prefer simulacra who are sympathetic to them, because otherwise the fusion simply would not work well if at all. You could go so far as to say that nephilim simply cannot merge with a simulacrum that doesn't meet a minimal threshold of psychological compatibility, or that if they do it causes extreme personality changes in the nephilim. This would be very difficult to roleplay, so switching simulacra shouldn't be a frequent thing. (E.g. look at Dax from Star Trek for an example.) Most of the Major Arcana work fine with this adjustment, save for those like Devil, Hanged Man, Death, and Moon, plus the ar-kaim. Those require a bit more thought. Devil believe enlightenment is found through khaiba and reject the muggle world entirely. Naturally, they might form genuine satanic cults in order to find simulacra with compatible personality types who won't accrue too much shouit points. In any case, Devil are probably not appropriate as PCs given their obviously antisocial culture. That they are an arcanum at all is interesting by itself. Hanged Man aren't as extreme under the symbiotic POV. They are probably the most similar to the awakened human mages in other RPGs, since they lack the ready access to past life memories and ancient perspective of other nephilim. However, this in itself gives them a unique POV since they think of themselves first as their current muggle lives and not as reincarnating wizards with ancient grudges. Moon encompasses nephilim with animal rather than human simulacra. If they are merges of elemental and simulacrum, then this raises the question of where their intelligence comes from. Since nephilim rely on the characteristics of their simulacrum plus the bonus from meta-characteristics, this means that the Moon Arcanum is at an intellectual disadvantage because their simulacra are animals. On the other hand, it does give them more reason to interact with muggles rather than living in total isolation like the Hermit Arcanum. After all, who do you think inspired the myths of the witch's familiar? Death is synonymous with selenim. In the French version, later editions apparently added that selenim could be born of the black moon field or "the spirits of dreamers" without having once been nephilim. I couldn't find a detailed source to confirm the nature of this, but I suppose it would be fine to run with the idea since the plans for the Chaosium adaptation involved major changes to the selenim lore like adding sarcophagi as a stasis precursor/equivalent. Black moon magic allows the selenim to manipulate solar-ka in ways unknown to the nephilim, such that they no longer have to worry about shouit and may switch simulacrum at will; I don't know how we would want to adapt any of this. Ar-kaim were never adapted into English. They were basically modern day superheroes with "talents" that worked like superpowers rather than the occult sciences. Ar-kaim are created when a muggle finds themselves at the right astrological conjunction and gets empowered with a "heart" of elemental ka. The heart may contain all eight of the ka elements, including black moon-ka and orichalcum/saturnian-ka. They haven't been around long enough to accumulate past lives, but the third edition included very brief rules for reincarnation. Not sure how they would be represented in BRP. Ideally our rules should account for selenim and ar-kaim rather than starting with nephilim and adding them later. For example, saturnian spells from Secret Societies use the existing occult sciences rather than inventing new ones; black moon spells could work the same. Not sure how to account for ar-kaim superpowers other than the "elemental effects" optional rule from Liber Ka p. 88; their shtick is that their innate abilities work like superpowers rather than spell-casting, which might not work well with the modern occult theme unless we draw inspiration from psychic phenomena.

Yahoo Groups is shutting down in December, with uploads being disabled next week. I'm glad I saved all the important files. Sadly I didn't think to save the photos and desktops, and the yahoo server is now having outages that prevent a last minute backup. There's so much else I wanted to save that I may not get a chance to, but I've resigned myself to the loss of years of history. If anybody wants to help pay for the transfer to groups.io, then ask Shannon for details. On a more positive note, here are two links to Nephilim-related websites: https://nephilim.obsidianportal.com/ This is somebody's campaign site, but it does include some neat ideas on cosmology like "evolving ka" and "residual ka" that I find quite useful for explanation. (Their info on Selenim is pure homebrew with no relation to the French original.) http://bmo.altervista.org/Nephilim/index.htm This is where I archived a bunch of old nephilim websites for posterity. There are a bunch of interesting ideas for mechanics hidden there.

I had plenty of ideas for revising the selenim rules, beyond what was originally planned for the English adaptation (according to the notes, selenim were going to have invented the precursor of stasis objects, meaning they would have their own equivalent that was absent in the French original). Among other things, it might make more sense to introduce the black moon spells for the existing occult sciences rather than introduce new black moon skills. The sorcery and alchemy rules were revised extensively in Enlightened Magic (unfortunately summoning never got a similar treatment) and Saturnian magic was introduced in the Secret Societies book, so it makes sense from that perspective. Unless we intend to overhaul the magic system again to take into account all eight elements.

There were about 90 files I uploaded from four different yahoo groups archives. I could zip them up, sure, but I don't know whether everything would be particularly useful to you. At least here, the files may be sorted fairly easily with the tagging system. And you can put comments on them. And stuff. I didn't upload the Nephilim redux/rewrite files or the unofficial translation of the selenim books since those were specified to be private by the sharers. I also saved an archive of some ancient fansites from decades ago, which might have some useful ideas.

Since Yahoo Groups is unstable, I copied over most of the files to here (except, as of this writing, the photos and desktop wallpapers). There wasn't a nephilim section, so I used the tagging system to keep the files organized. Hopefully this doesn't cause any problems. If the mods have anything to say, I will defer to their judgment. Thanks!